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Comment by Accujack | Hacker News Reader

Yes. People blame the court for doing the correct (if not right, because courts don't really do "right") thing.

The problem is that there's no constitutional amendment making an exception to the first amendment to limit or forbid contributions to campaigns. It should never have been an ordinary law in the first place.

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I fundamentally disagree with this, but on different grounds. I absolutely believe that groups of people have fewer rights than individual people. A corporation should have no right against self-incrimination, for instance. An LLC should have no right for freedom of religion. Groups are, by definition, not a monolith, and defending the rights of the group often infringes on the rights of the individual. Extending individual rights to the aggregate is absurd, and the abuses of it lead to the worst outcomes in case-law.

A church shouldn't have freedom of religion?

a church is not a person, it cannot believe in anything. how does a church pray? how does it make a confession?

do not antropomorphize companies, it does not compute at all.

I agree that the church itself doesn't have freedom of religion. But for the members of the church to have freedom of religion they need to be able to exercise their freedom as an organized group. The end result is the same: the government is limited in what restrictions it can place on the group, because to restrict the group is to restrict the members.

I don't understand your argument. The church members individually have the right to practice their religion however they want so long as it doesn't impinge on others' rights or laws. The group aspect really doesn't come into play at all. In the same way, those same individuals can contribute as individuals to whatever cause they choose. The problem is when resources get pooled and an organization rather than its individuals decides where to allocate those resources politically. That's where the parent comment thinks the line should be drawn.

Very few religious people would consider allowing the practice of religion “without the group aspect” to be “freedom of religion.” That freedom, especially in the United States, necessarily encompasses groups of religious people pooling resources to build houses of worship, educate their children, participate in the community, and advocate for causes.

None of that actually requires specific religious protection. Protection of the freedom of religion is necessary when the beliefs of religious groups clash with the values of the community at large - for instance, Christian Scientists do not vaccinate as they avoid modern medicine in general. This is a carve-out to mandatory vaccination programs, in favor of religious freedom.

The group version of this right would be the Church of Christ, Scientist not needing to provide healthcare to its workers (not all of whom may be Christian Scientists themselves), in order to protect their deeply-held beliefs.

> None of that actually requires specific religious protection.

It requires specific religious protection if you're afraid of countries that persecute specific religions and want to take every measure to avoid becoming one. The Pilgrims came to America because of religious persecution. England still has a state church to this day.

I guess what I'm saying sort of agrees with you, but that I'm seeing how "clash with the values of the community at large" could refer to "have any religion except the official one" or even "have a religion". There's a possibility that the community at large could become hostile to many or even all religions in the future.

> The problem is when resources get pooled and an organization rather than its individuals decides where to allocate those resources politically.

Like unions?

Yeah, I wasn't talking about money or political activism, but about freedom of religion.

> But for the members of the church to have freedom of religion they need to be able to exercise their freedom as an organized group.

There is no logic in this sentence. An organised group as an entity doesn't need to be treated the same as a citizen for the freedoms of the members of the group to be respected, I don't understand where is the leap between: rights of a citizen should be extended as rights of a virtual entity that groups citizens. Why?

The sentence is logical, you’re just incorrectly assuming it’s a simple syllogism. The OP isn’t saying that churches need to be treated substitutably with members of the church. But it’s apparent that churches as entities need to be protected in order to protect individual religious freedom. If the government banned mosques (as legal entities) from constructing buildings and holding gatherings, that wouldn’t ban Islam, but it would obviously be an impingement on the religious freedom of Muslims.

Supreme court cases build upon precedent. It sounds like your real issue is with corporate personhood. That was decided in a case that Citizens United built on, so I would recommend barking up that tree instead.

In any case, I personally feel corporate personhood actually does make sense. It’s absurd that I as an individual can engage in speech but if I communicate through a company that I solely own now I can’t.

Trying to “get money out of politics” is a fools’ errand; as Citizens v United demonstrates, speech often requires money. What we really need is the opposite: get politics out of my damn money!

(By the way, most who have been spoonfed the “get money out of politics” line are entirely ignorant on the facts of the CU case. As I recall Hillary Clinton was trying to suppress a documentary critical of her because it was too close to an election. Does that sound like something you’re a fan of?)

Without corporate personhood, you wouldn’t lose any of your rights as an owner (stockholder), employee, or officer of a corporation- you just wouldn’t get to magnify your individual rights by using the power of the corporation. As an individual, you’d still get to speak your mind on whatever. In my opinion, you just shouldn’t be allowed to take the enormous financial power of a corporation and turn it towards your own ends and call it “individual rights”.

The “corporation” in Citizens United was a dinky non-profit. Has the case gone the other way, nothing would stop the government from regulating how the New York Times used its “enormous financial power” for speech.

> In any case, I personally feel corporate personhood actually does make sense. It’s absurd that I as an individual can engage in speech but if I communicate through a company that I solely own now I can’t.

I've always struggled reconciling this with the notion of limited liability. A similar crime does not beget a similar punishment.

Because then you have 2 voices via 2 distinct legal entities - you as a natural person and through controlling your limited company.

You also have an issue with foreign ownership of these entities having directly electoral influence.

On the corporate personhood movement, the problem is that it is cheery picking all of the rights of natural persons while trying to shy away from as much responsibilities as possible. This needs to be re-balanced somewhat.

It's also notable that people who complain about money in politics tend to bring up the Koch brothers most often, but the Koch brothers are an example of individuals spending large sums on speech, not corporations.

Nothing like the very egalitarian principle that says, "One rich man can advocate for his interests, but 100 poor men may not pool their resources to advocate for theirs."

It takes 100 poor men to match the rich guy and that is fairness to you?

What makes more sense is limiting both groups.

Leveling the playing field by banning political speech entirely? I don't really get your suggestion here.

Just like the very egalitarian principle that says, "One rich man can advocate for his interests by himself and by the work of 100 poor man"

the commas in the first amendment make it confusing but

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

I think the reading 'Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech' makes more sense linguistically than 'Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or the right of the people to peacefully assemble', that is to say the freedom of speech is not limited to people by the first amendment.

Although I am in agreement that groups of people must inherently have less rights than the aggregate I believe the commas in the first amendment make it difficult to argue that it limits free speech in this manner.

In a nation with 330 million people, freedom of speech that cannot be aggregated is not freedom of speech. You'd shrink the first amendment to just covering someone arguing in a bar or shouting on the street corner.

> The problem is that there's no constitutional amendment making an exception to the first amendment to limit or forbid contributions to campaigns.

Citizens United wasn’t about campaign contributions. It’s already illegal for corporations to donate to campaigns.

Citizens United was about whether a 501(c)(4) corporation—just like the ACLU or the NAACP—can be prosecuted for releasing a movie critical of a candidate. Justice Kennedy wasn’t analogizing money to speech—the case was whether the government could control political speech by controlling how a corporation used its money in publishing a movie.

Here is the ACLU’s take on a constitutional amendment: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/campaign-finance-refor...

To be clear, the law does limit contributions to campaigns. What they don't limit is third party organizations spending money on their own ads. Which is as it should be.

Since money is not speech there is no first amendment issue. There is however a conservative court determined to have the wealthy own politicians.

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